By the Side of the Road…

As I have moaned about before, I drive a lot for my job, especially on Tuesdays. There are good days and bad days when driving as there are everywhere, but Monday nights and Tuesdays are the days where I tend to see the most interesting things on the road, or by the road.

Monday nights my boyfriend and I drive from Karlovy Vary to Sokolov at dusk. A lot of animals come out at dusk- as we have noticed. For whatever reason, this wildlife likes to be by the side of the motorway.

We have seen numerous deer on this drive, which was exciting for the Irishman, because he had never seen a live wild deer before, but we were very surprised one Monday when we saw two large dark brown blobs by an off ramp.

Ok, I must have amazing peripheral vision, because I, despite being the driver, tend to be the one to spot the wildlife. On this particular Monday, it was a brown boulder that wasn’t by this particular off-ramp before. Then it moved.

It was two wild boars. The only other time I had ever seen wild boar was when I was in Germany with my second host family on a hunt. That boar came crashing through the underbrush and scared the crap out of me and my host siblings. These two boars were hanging out by the off-ramp munching grass, tails swishing (at least I imagine the tails swishing). I was excited. If it hadn’t been the motorway, I would have considered attempting a photograph.

Again on our Monday dusky drive home after a long day, we had made it to our off-ramp without anything exciting happening. In the copse was a white something. Luckily, I was slowing down to take the ramp and we could get a good look at two white deer! I have NEVER seen white deer before! It made me think of the romantic White Hart that kings always follow to their quest or for some soulful purpose. Neither of these had any antlers to speak of and one wasn’t pure white- it had a brown shoulder, but it was still rather exciting.

I definitely enjoy the variety of wildlife that is in the Czech Republic and I enjoy randomly coming across it. Nature and towns being so close together and not really having definite borders has a lot to do with these encounters. I realize that this setup is not the best for wildlife, but it’s fun for me and I have seen more live animals on the side of the road than dead- that’s something!

My favorite animal I have come across is a pine martin or weasel. I am not an expert on mustelids, so I can’t be sure what type of weasely creature I have seen. I have seen this little fellow or lady three times now. Always late at night and two times when it was snowy. I had a ferret as a pet, so the long body and the silly run just make me want to catch it and cuddle it! Ahem…I mean study it….

While Monday’s seem to be wildlife spotting day, Tuesdays are a different breed of animal all together. An unpleasant one as well. Tuesday afternoons I drive from Sokolov to Cheb, about 22miles. Cheb is on the border of Germany and is well known for its “ladies of questionable repute”.

I have a vague memory of driving across the German/Czech border in a tour bus with a group of exchange students and seeing lots of little huts on the side of the road. Some of these huts had large display windows with strings of LED lights bordering them. In these windows stood what I thought at first to be scantily clad manikins. In reality, they were women plying their trade.

That experience was crossing a border on a forested sparsely populated road. My Tuesday drive takes me through villages and on a busy motorway. Every Tuesday, rain, shine or snow, there are two women standing right outside a village by the off-ramp from the motorway. I passed them with a Czech person who confirmed in rough terms that they were indeed prostitutes.

Recently, now that the sun is shinning and the weather is improving, there is a woman, a very, in my opinion, appallingly dressed woman who stands at a roundabout in Cheb. The first time I passed her she looked to be only wearing a mid-thigh trench coat and I had to double take to see that there was in fact a strip of skirt barely showing under the hem of the coat. The most recent sighting she had her leg on a rail exposing her underclothes to all passerbyers- which were a bright pink and hard not to notice.

I don’t know the story of how these women got to be doing what they are doing, but it makes me sad to see it. To be honest with myself, I also find it disgusting. Again, I don’t know anything about them, so I shouldn’t judge. I would rather that “it” happened out of my sight so that I didn’t have to think of the unpleasantness. Does that make me horrible? I hope not.

My theory about their placement is that there is a constant stream of truckers by these two locations. It makes sense and fits a stereotype- sadly.

Anyway, to try and not end on that note, there are lots of really cool animals to see in the Czech Republic. So, come Czech them out! Haha…..that was bad.